Articles tagged "All"

Barbara Anslow had left Hong Kong in 1929, but returned in 1938 in time for her twentieth birthday. Here Barbara tells us what it was like to live in Hong Kong at that time, first giving us an overview, then quoting selected entries from her diary for 1939. Over to Barbara...

Background

On 5th November 1937 my parents told my sisters and I that we would all be going to Hong Kong again. We were living in Shotley, near Ipswich. I was almost 19, Olive 21 and Mabel 14. Both Olive and I were shorthand typists in the engineering firm Ransomes & Rapier, Ipswich. Mabel was still at school.

My Dad's brother wrote that my parents must be mad to take us girls to an area fraught with danger: the Japanese had attacked Shanghai in the summer of 1937, and shortly before Christmas they had shot up and sunk the U.S. Gunboat Panay on the Yangtse River. But we thought that was a long way away from Hong Kong.

So on 13th January 1938 <Read more ...>

Where: This view isn't difficult to locate, as though over 60 years have passed, the road in the foreground looks much the same today. (E-mail subscribers, please click to view the web version of this page so you can see the modern view below.)

Who: Today the road is a popular family walk, leading down from the Peak to the reservoir at Pok Fu Lam. Most people walk the road in daytime, but if you choose a dry, dark evening after sunset in summer, you'll likely be rewarded by seeing fire flies in the bushes along the way.

The downhill direction is obviously the easier way to go, but the family in this photo have chosen the more strenuous uphill climb. The men are wearing jackets, so hopefully it was a cool day.

What: The "ruins" in the title both have a link to men in uniform. Army first - they were the residents of the building on the left for many years. It is the <Read more ...>